By: Mary South – Yachting Magazine – August 2012

If there's one thing I look forward to every year, it's my annual trip to Brooklin, Maine. Brooklin bills itself as the wooden boat building capital of the world, and while there may be some poetic license in there, it's not a wild exaggeration. It is home to that justly famous incubator and enabler of wooden boat fanatics, the WoodenBoat School. Joel White's famed Brooklin Boatyard, now run by his son Steven, is here as well. But there are many other builders in this region, working in wood and fiberglass, including D.N. Hylan & Associates, Wilbur, Ellis, Hinckley, Brion Reiff, Calvin Beal, Young Brothers, Lowell Brothers and the Atlantic Boat Co., builders of Duffy and BHM - to name just a few! (How's a boat lover not going to fall in love with this part of the world?)

I spent some time with a few smaller builders this year and was struck by their attitudes. It's not a secret that their shops are quiet. There are empty desks, wide-open work bays, idle tools and dusty order books. Everyone sees signs of the economy improving. but nothing tangible has trickled down yet.

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A letter from George Morris – submitted to Yachting Magazine via email in response to the article "Dream Bigger" reprinted above.

I read the Editor's Letter (“Dream Bigger," August 2012) with great interest. In fact, it describes exactly an experience I was fortunate enough to have.

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By Stephen Rappaport

BROOKLIN, ME — Twelve miles isn’t a huge distance in the abstract, but there’s nothing abstract in the pounding a boat and its passengers can take crossing a dozen miles of rough seas.

Buzzards Bay, the long inlet that separates Cape Cod from the southern Massachusetts mainland, is notorious for its testing seas. From late spring well into the fall, the prevailing afternoon southwesterly wind — the “smoky sou’wester”— often blows hard against a strong ebb tide. The result, especially near the mouth of the bay around the island of Cuttyhunk, is a short, steep chop that can loosen the fillings in a sailor’s teeth or the fastening in a boat’s planking.

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